Old Blog Posts: August 2008

Will has always been fascinated by emotions.  Long (LONG) before he learned his colors, he learned “sad” and delighted in telling us about who and what was sad.  But it was only just tonight that he added “happy” to his vocabulary.

And suddenly the world opened up that much more.  “Hap-hap-happe-hap-ha-hap-HAPPY NAN” he told us as he looked from his bed to the picture of the Turchin clan that hangs on his wall.  “Happy Mer!”  “Happy mom!”  “Happy Dad!”  (with plenty of stuttering at the beginning of each description.)

As he hugged us goodnight he told us “Happy mom”  and “Happy dad” and hearing that DID make us happy.

We are working a TON on two word phrases.  Everything that we see and describe (and he then parrots) is two words.  “Red truck” “brown rock” “sad dog.”  He’s doing a great job, but the stuttering is more pronounced now because it’s the two word phrases that bring it on.  He gets so sad and frustrated sometimes when he can’t spit it out–that part makes me want to run far away from two word practice.  Nothing is more pathetic than “sa-sad-sad-sa-sad-sad-sa-sa…[whine and then sob]” but we keep on keepin on.

The boys have been sick the last two days so we haven’t been out and about.  But on Tuesday we all went on a little hike and it was so much fun to see Will in action on a trail.  Always with a rock or a stick in hand…usually going too fast for his own good and tripping and falling (though he seemed to master both the word and the concept of “slow” this last trip).  We saw a snake and lots and lots of bunnies…which was good, because I’d promised Will a chance at seeing both of those things.  He knows to stay on the trail and only sometimes forgets (those damn bunnies–they just beg to be chased).

His first hike was with Nic at Garden of the Gods (I posted a few pics on the work blog).  They were out on adventures while I was home working, so all of this is second-hand. Nic said Will walked along saying “trail” “trail” “trail” most of the time, and when they finished the loop and Nic asked Will if he wanted to go home, Will said “no.  more trail.” so they started on the loop again…and then after the halfway point Will turned around and said “home?” and wanted to walk back the other way, but Nic told him that home was the other way.  So after that Will walked and walked saying “home.”  “home.”   “home.”  Apparently even our Energizing Bunny of a toddler has his limits!

We are into our busiest two months of the year, so hopefully we will continue to keep it together and meet all of our deadlines and still have time for outtings.  We worked out a great schedule last week that has everything feeling very smooth.  Nic watches Will in the morning while I work, and then after naptime, it’s family time until Will goes to bed…and then I catch-up on anything else I had wanted to accomplish that day or take a break and read.  (re-reading the Twilight books is sort of a full time job for me…and I’m also reading Animal, Vegatable, Miracle, and it is a darned good thing that we are poor as dirt or I would have us 100% on a local organic diet and be looking into buying our own cows and chickens.)  It’s much easier to be optimistic at the end of the first week of our busy season, though, than I imagine it will be in a couple of weeks when the work has piled up! 

I expect to see the light at the end of the tunnel around the beginning of November. September will be the worst of it, because we have so (SO!) many weddings, albums to design, print orders to process (this takes an astonishing amount of time), and then it is senior portrait season on top of that…along with families wanting to get in nice weather pictures for Christmas cards and gifts.  I keep reminding myself that I will be missing this busy-ness (and all of the incoming money) in January!  If only photography was a year-round thing in Colorado like it is in some of the southern states!

Will’s first sentence:  “Pirates say argh.”

Pronounced totally perfectly–every word exact.

It’s 3am (well, 4am now), and I can’t sleep (thanks to someone very short who also can’t sleep) and so I’m pouring over google maps and the internet planning my trip to New York in December!  (Betcha didn’t know that I was so cool!)

One of my clients is flying me out to NYC for a weekend in December to shoot their engagement pictures.  It will be my first time away from the boober overnight (I’m flying out Saturday and returning Monday evening)…but something tells me I’ll manage.  Because this is 3 miles from where I’ll be staying.

I am so excited!

We seem to have cracked the bedtime craziness that always threatens to consume us all in endless hours of more kisses and hugs.  Things we’ll be great for some time, then we’ll have a disruption to the routine (babysitters on wedding nights don’t help) and then it will get all out of whack for a while.  We cracked the whip this week (which, in this family, means you only get one set of hugs/kisses–after that, you’re simply escorted back to bed) and we have far fewer bedtime interuptions from our little creeper.

Except that this time, the routine is a little disturbing to me: he falls asleep on the floor in his doorway.  Either wanting to be closer to us, or waiting for us to cave at his cuteness and come give him kisses and hugs.  Either way, it’s pathetic and sad!

As entertaining to me as the sounds that Will makes are, the ones that he DOESN’T make are the most interesting to me.

Like how “x” and “s” sound the same when he says the alphabet (he has “x” and thinks “s” is the same thing)

Or how he pronounces “orange” “oranch” and how “swinging” and “swimming” and even “climbing” sound nearly identical.

I was thumbing through my iphone notes this morning and discovered a couple of things I’d jotted down that I’d meant to write about here.  They are a couple of weeks old, but here goes:

Will rubbed his eyes one day around naptime as he was crying about something and said “eyes tired.”  He is very European and likes to put his adjectives after his nouns.  His red ball is “ball red.”  (It has Lightning McQueen on it and he sleeps with it at night.)

About a month ago Will had his neighborhood friends over and Nic gave them all a snack.  He handed snacks to Tori, 15, and Jameson, 5…and neither of them said thank you.  But Will did!  (He is super polite and says “thank you” and “your welcome” all the time.)

He LOVES watermelon.  Nic bought some from Costco a couple of weeks ago and Will kept going into the fridge, grabbing a whole one, lugging it out and saying “more melon?”

He also likes presents.  He totally gets the concept and gets very excited when packages arrive here.  If you tell him that something is a present, he treasures it more.  “Pres?!” he says.  Like “someone thought of ME?”  Sometimes he asks for “more pres” which makes me laugh.

We are super busy around here.  Next week starts our “six weddings in five weeks” stint, and I am already behind from August photo mania!  It’s fantastic for us, though, and I appreciate having Nic around.  He is very much a Mr Mom these days–taking Will to the zoo or the pool so I can get some uninterupted work done.  I definitely dream of a future in which my photography income would be enough to support the family and things could be just as they are now.

Nic has decided to go back to school and become a teacher.  He has loved being home with Will this summer and a teacher’s schedule will allow him to do that every year, plus it is very condusive to photography–being off work during wedding season!  The money will be terrible, but I make enough with photography to supplement it, and with both of us working, we should be able to be back at our previous income level.  The program Nic applied for is a 9 month program that starts in October.  It’s all online and part time, so he’s still looking for full time work in the mean time. He continues to send out lots of applications and go to interviews, we just don’t have any good news yet.  I’m not worried about it anymore, though–one way or another, it will all work out.  We’re just keeping our eyes open and following any opportunities we see!

Last night I went to my monthly “cooking club” with a few new friends.  I took Will along because one of the women brings her daughter that is just a couple of months older than Will, and they had a fantastic time playing together (Taylor is “girl” to Will, Will is “boy” to Taylor).  And Will was so enamoured with her that he insisted on closing the bathroom door before peeing–certainly a first!  Last night’s host has a cat, and Will was in love.  Even more than he likes dogs–he loved that cat!  He was so gentle and sweet…it’s a good thing Nic is allergic or we would be forced to get one!

Speaking of pets, our sweet Fifi had to be put to sleep this week.  Mitzy isn’t taking it as well as she did with Buttercup–she is out of sorts and anxious.  She spends a lot of time looking for Fiona, which breaks my heart.  We are looking for a new home for her–we’d decided a few months ago that once Fiona died, we’d look for a new family for Mitzy.  She will be miserable as an only ferret, and we can’t take on another pet right now.  We are hoping to find a good family for her–hopefully that works out, because it would be very sad for her to be lonely.

In the last week Will has started tickling me out of the blue.  He’s terrible at it–it’s basically just very gentle pinches, but he says “tick, tick, tick” in a cute little voice when he does it–just like I say “tickle, tickle, tickle” to him!

Yesterday I was giving Will a piggy-back and he burped one of those scary juicy burps and I said “don’t throw up on me!”

And then he started fake throwing up on me.

WHAT?!!

How does he know what throw up is and how does he know how to fake it?!  It’s been AGES since he was sick!

Totally blew me away.

So today when he was on my back and made a funny gurgle I said “don’t throw up on me!” just so Nic could see the performance.

I’ve been dreading this since the LAST time we hired a nanny.   I hate hate HATE interviewing people and searching for our own perfect Mary Poppins (and one who won’t totally flake out on us).

We had the first of what feels like will be many interviews today.   I wish we could keep Brooke here forever!

Is green.

He confuses yellow and blue almost always, but he likes those, too.  Gray is “shiny.”  And pink is red.